Economists Dissing Economics

For whatever reason, I found myself compiling a list of 20 or so quotes, mostly from well known economists, criticising mainstream economics. What’s most interesting is that although the quotes come from a wide range of economists, with different political views and from different times, they seem to have a lot in common.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

― Joan Robinson

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

― John Kenneth Galbraith

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

― John Kenneth Galbraith

…the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.

― Thomas Piketty

Too large a proportion of recent “mathematical” economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.

― John Maynard Keynes

We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions.

― Wassily Leontief

Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.

― Ronald Coase

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.

― Paul Krugman

Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.

― Milton Friedman

Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing.

― Mark Blaug

Economics has never been a science – and it is even less now than a few years ago.

― Paul Samuelson

For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.

― Thomas Piketty

In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.

― Ronald Coase

If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, “what would I do if I were a horse?

― Ronald Coase

Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.

― F. A. Hayek

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.

― Ludwig von Mises

The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis.

― Robert Heilbroner

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

― Laurence J. Peter

When an economist says the evidence is “mixed,” he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite.

― Richard Thaler

The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.

These are great. I remember an interview I read with the British film maker Adam Curtis where he referred to economics as, “a failed pseudoscience.” Remember thinking “come on Adam, that’s a bit harsh” but maybe he was on to something after all.

He did make a funny documentary in the early 90’s about the history of post-war British economists trying to manage the national economy and not doing so well. I really like the part about how Bill Philips built a big machine that pumps water around to show how the economy “works” and the LSE grad students who rebuilt it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR50UpdPRiA

But to look at this more positively – doesn’t this show (at least in some of quotes) that economists have a sense of humor and the ability for self-parody ? Does such a culture exists in (say) physics where some of the theory (string theory etc) is equally dubious ?

I’ve long been of the opinion that the edifice of economics is far more rigid and unreflective than economists themselves. Not that there aren’t some bad individuals – Prescott, Lucas, Williamson – but you might say the whole is worse than the sum of its parts.

But string theorist point out that until experimental evidence comes to light, it’s a theory (in the coloquial sense), plus, there’s that point that you don’t get a real nobel prize in physics for wrongly predicting the fall of an apple.

Reblogged this on Ramblings of Doctoral scholar and commented:
These are funny, yet touching on a concerns I’ve had for a few years now as a PhD, especially since I’m not as mathematically inclined, and have a general preference for conceptual understanding over mathematical shenanigans..

Physics envy, enough said. The irony being that the scientific method went completely against the philosophical ideas of the time, because it insisted on going out into the real world and observing what actually happens. Many of the quotes above highlight that economics based on actually going out into the field to research how businesses, banks etc. actually work is seen as lesser research to the work of arm chair economists who come up with elegant theories, and display them in mathematical models. The latter is the Aristotlesque way of learning about the world, which science overthrew during the enlightenment.